charter

It keeps pulling itself back together.

The end of the Comcast – Time Warner – Charter mega-merger and market swap means the cable television market in California will still be split mostly between the four largest U.S. cable companies, which are those three plus Cox. At least for now.

Conventional wisdom says that Time Warner is still in play, and Charter is likely to be the next company to make a move. Unless Time Warner decides to try to buy Charter first.… More

Not what the CPUC was thinking of ordering.

It’s almost certainly too little, too late, but Comcast has offered a few concessions to the California Public Utilities Commission, in the hopes of gaining approval for its proposed mega-merger and market swap with Time Warner and Charter. According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, Comcast came to a public meeting in LA last week with a much lighter alternative to the long list of conditions proposed by a CPUC hearing officer…

On Tuesday the company submitted a list of voluntary commitments that it said would be acceptable.

You weren’t expecting a new act, were you?

It doesn’t look like any progress was made at a California Public Utilities Commission-supervised meeting between Comcast, its would-be mega-merger allies and opponents of the deal in Los Angeles on Tuesday. I was thinking of flying down to LA to see the show, but after reading the news accounts of it, I’m glad I didn’t. It seems – judging from those reports, anyway – that it was more of the same old, same old.… More

It’s a new game.

The California Public Utilities Commission will formally consider denying Comcast’s proposed takeover of Time Warner and Charter cable systems in the state. Until now, the conversation has been guided by a tentative decision drafted by a CPUC administrative law judge that would approve the merger and market swap, with a long list of temporary conditions. On Friday, commissioner Mike Florio proposed an alternative decision that would reject the deal outright…

Certain material facts are beyond serious dispute: the merger will roughly double Comcast’s share of broadband subscribers in California, leaving it with several times more broadband customers than all its competitors combined; Comcast’s market dominance is even more dramatic if the market is defined as broadband above 25 Mbps; and given this substantial increase in market share, Comcast will have a concomitant increase in control over Californians’ access to online content and services…

Comcast and Time Warner each have an effective monopoly on providing broadband services within its local geographic area…a post-merger Comcast will have a monopoly on speed tiers of 25 Mbps and above in approximately 78 percent of California census blocks, with only one competitor in almost all the rest.

It’s not official yet, but you can safely bet that the California Public Utilities Commission won’t be voting this Thursday on whether or not to approve the proposed Comcast-Time Warner-Charter mega merger and market swap. The CPUC posted an announcement yesterday that another “all parties” meeting will be held in Los Angeles in April to try to thrash out the three-cornered fight over the deal.

Comcast and its presumed partners want the transactions to be rubber-stamped with no conditions, consumer advocacy groups – including the CPUC’s office of ratepayer advocates – say it should be killed outright, and two other groups – the California Emerging Technology Fund (CETF) and Caltel, a lobbying organisation for competitive phone companies – want the conditions, at least those that benefit their respective interests.… More